Midcourse correction needed

Dallas Morning News: The most fitting legacy from the Columbia shuttle disaster would be an end to NASA's recent history of serious management miscalculations.
In a recent interview, Brig. Gen. Duane Deal, a member of the independent board investigating the disaster, said the National Aeronautics and Space Administration would "take a pretty big hit" when the board releases its findings next month. The space agency's managers, he said, "were perhaps out of touch with the realities of manned space flight," a comment suggesting that safety shortcuts had become standard operating procedure.
While we won't know the facts until the report is made public, it seems that NASA managers made the mistake some private-sector executives make. They became complacent and took too many safety risks.
If that indeed is the report's main conclusion, it would hardly be a surprise since the General Accounting Office and countless others have warned for years that NASA has a serious personnel problem. Downsizing in the mid-1990s stripped NASA of experienced employees on the shuttle program while persistent pressure from Congress for shuttle program employees to work, faster, smarter and cheaper made it increasingly difficult for NASA officials to take a more measured and judicious approach to safety checks.
Brain drain
The personnel problem has other dimensions, as well. There's a serious brain drain at NASA as a generation of smart scientists is retiring faster than they can be replaced. Add to that the inevitable problems that accompany an aging shuttle fleet and the future of space exploration is very much in turmoil.
As a nation we should continue to endorse space exploration as a worthy scientific accomplishment. The massive multi-country commitment to the International Space Station requires the shuttle to fly again. Still, the U.S. space program should wean itself from expensive shuttle launches in favor of unmanned scientific probes and research to develop the next-generation replacement for the shuttle.
The two shuttle disasters are not reasons to abandon space exploration, but are cause for the space agency to take a deep breath and re-evaluate everything it is doing, from management structure to its prime mission.